The Stranger Game. Peter Gadol

live around the corner from here. I made chicken soup last night. Come home with me now, I’ll give you some homemade soup, you’ll feel better. Let me get rid of the people in my office, then we’ll get you some soup.”

      “This sounds unorthodox,” I said.

      “Nobody follows the rules all the time,” the detective said.

      Her house was a clapboard cottage painted mint green, the trim also green but darker. Green was clearly Detective Martinez’s favorite color because her sunlit cozy kitchen with its shelves of cookbooks and pots hanging over the range was yet another soft green. I did feel calmer sipping warm soup on a warm day. There was a collection of frogs on a windowsill, some crystal, some plastic. Two large dogs were lolling in the sun in the backyard. I knew that Detective Martinez didn’t want to tell me that after two months she was pretty sure Ezra wouldn’t turn up. She wasn’t exactly my new friend, but she knew I needed a new friend.

      “Can I ask you something?” Detective Martinez said. “And I ask this because I’m trying to help. You admitted to finding the article, great. Is there anything else maybe that you haven’t told me?”

      “Nothing,” I said a little too quickly.

      The detective didn’t blink.

      “Now you know everything,” I said.

      “Okay. Right.”

      “No, honestly, you do.”

      “All right then, I’ll believe you. Let me put it this way. Rebecca, let’s say hypothetically that Ezra has moved on—”

      “I haven’t been to the studio today,” I said. “I really should go.”

      “Let’s just say he’s moved on. You two haven’t been together awhile now. Let’s just say he disappeared because he wanted a new life, and this was the only way he knew how to find it. So. What about you? What are you going to do now for yourself?”

      I wasn’t going to give the detective what she wanted. I thanked her for her soup and sympathy, told her to let me know if she learned anything new, and I left.